


nobody here but us chickens

by Rabbitt



Category: Haven - Fandom
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-01
Updated: 2014-09-01
Packaged: 2018-02-15 14:56:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,599
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2233212
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rabbitt/pseuds/Rabbitt
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"When did you become the one that runs?" Duke asks.</p>
            </blockquote>





	nobody here but us chickens

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lovesrogue36](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lovesrogue36/gifts).



> TroublesFest2014. For lovesrogue36, who prompted Audrey/Duke/Nathan and “Grey Gull, Glass shards, Cowardice”. I hope you like it.

 

 

“We're more of the love, blood, and rhetoric school. Well, we can do you blood and love without the rhetoric, and we can do you blood and rhetoric without the love, and we can do you all three concurrent or consecutive. But we can't give you love and rhetoric without the blood. Blood is compulsory. They're all blood, you see.”

_\- Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead_

 

 

 

“When did you become the one that runs?” Duke asks.

This night will end with her settling herself on Nathan’s lap, feeling him harden beneath her as she rocks her hips upwards. Swiping her tongue along his teeth and listening to the moan that resonates from low in his throat, but first Audrey watches as Nathan trembles, shoulders shaking with the force of something that’s been building inside of him for a long time. His eyes are wide like a spooked horse.

“When do you think?” he hisses.

Six months was a lifetime, Audrey knows. She hadn’t seen how Nathan had broken in the months she and Duke were gone, but she’d seen what he had managed to gather up of himself when they came back.

Audrey doesn’t think Nathan has ever found any other way to love than _until it kills him._

Duke runs a hand through his hair, frustrated. “Fuck it.”

He comes at Nathan in two quick steps, his hands clutching Nathan’s jaw.

There’s a second where Nathan goes boneless as he kisses him, knees nearly giving out, his weight in Duke’s hands. Duke kisses his snarling mouth with force, pressing the whole of himself against Nathan.

Later that night he will kiss back, his hands clumsy and quick on Duke’s hips, biting at his throat to taste the seawater of his skin but now Nathan just growls, teeth bared.

Duke is kissing him like a hand extended, cards laid out. Audrey can see the desperation in his hands, framing Nathan’s face, trying to convey everything they’ve been saying to him all night.

What they are asking is to fuck him.

What they are asking is for Nathan not to martyr himself on the altar of Haven.

Nathan fists his hands in Duke’s shirt and twists, slamming his back onto the bar. Bottles rattle. Duke goes. He lets Nathan splay him out, bend over him like a wolf bringing down prey. His mouth is hungry, devouring.

When Nathan breaks away he’s gasping, his hands still clenched in Duke’s shirt, knuckles holding him down. He looks up and his gaze meets Audrey’s. She doesn't know when Nathan became an open book to her: desire and rage and fear and fear and _fear_.

Audrey nods.

“Offer’s on the table,” Duke says. He quirks an eyebrow. “So am I.”

Nathan shoves away from him, stumbling back.

Something’s got to give, Audrey knows.

She feels like a stellar body that pulled both Nathan and Duke into her orbit. It’s a lot of responsibility, being gravity, especially when she looks at the two of them and knows they’re going to crash into each other any day now. She just wonders who’s going to break first.

Turns out it’s Duke’s window, after Nathan puts his fist through it.

She looks at his face after the glass shatters, scattering like a star chart across the deck, and knows it was either the window or Duke’s nose. She can’t fault him his choice.

She watches the rise and fall of his broad shoulders as he breathes heavily. Duke scrambles up to stand beside her with one hand swung out, palm splayed, like he’s trying to save her from a car crash. Nathan turns around slowly, and she watches the fight that’s been coming for weeks, years, since he was born, maybe, visibly drain from him.

A low whine of wind comes in through the shattered glass, thick with the scent of salt and rotting seaweed.

Tonight Duke’s grip will tighten on her shoulders with sure, long-fingered hands. He will hold her hips as she lowers herself down on Nathan’s cock, his hand reaching around her to circle her clit, and she’ll throw her head back against the sweep of his shoulder. Now, in the corner of her eye, she sees him swallow hard.

Nathan's hand is bleeding. Next to her, Duke takes a step back. His hands go up slowly, like Nathan’s holding a loaded gun.

“You dumbass,” he says, voice cracking.

“I’m fine.”

“No, you’re a disaster,” Duke says, voice rough with something, anger or hurt, and she should be able to recognise it, she should know by now. “I’m getting a first aid kit.”

He stalks off towards the bar. Audrey approaches Nathan carefully, like a stray dog. There’s something feral in the way he holds his body, in his narrowed eyes. She and Duke have backed him into a corner, but she can’t bring herself to feel bad. This is a breakdown a long time coming.

Nathan’s been burning himself out like a meteor through atmosphere.

Later, he will call out both their names, punch-drunk, howling.

It’s always going to be a fight, Audrey thinks, between the three of them. There’s always going to be someone bleeding.

“I’m fine,” Nathan says again, automatically.

Audrey hums softly. She reaches for him, and watches his expression as she slowly takes his hand, pain flickering awake at her touch. He hisses.

“Let’s get you cleaned up, huh?” She leads him to a bar stool, guides him down. Duke emerges from behind the bar and slams a first aid kit down with excessive noise. He drapes himself over the bar, leaning on his elbows just out of Nathan’s touching distance. Close to her. His gaze never leaves the blood on Nathan’s knuckles, dripping softly onto the floor.

Audrey watches Nathan watch them. The same expression she’s seen for weeks now flickers over his face. Here is the awful truth, of course: Nathan is not jealous of Duke. Oh, sure, he is jealous of the way his body works unbroken, how he can respond to touch and pain and his fingers aren’t dead clumsy without any effort. She can see that easy enough. But he has never, ever, been jealous of him because of Audrey. And she can see that it sits heavy in him all the time now, the space where jealousy should be, filled with something else.

“Try not to bleed all over my bar,” Duke says. It’s fear, Audrey can tell now, in the scrape of his voice. Only fear.

Audrey is very delicate as she picks out pieces of glass from his knuckles and cleans the cuts.

“Don’t think you need any more scars,” she says lightly, dabbing him with disinfectant. Nathan’s jaw clenches.

“There,” Audrey says, finally, tying off a clean white bandage. That bandage will nearly glow bright against Duke’s skin and Duke will shudder every time it touches him.  “Right as rain.”

He flexes his hand.

Audrey is tired of being afraid. Tired of all of them being afraid. She holds onto Nathan’s hand.

“Hey,” she says. “You gonna answer his question?” She tilts her chin in Duke’s direction.

“I sort of figured trashing his place was answer enough.”

Duke snorts. “Trashing? Hardly. The place has seen worse.” He picks at his sleeve. “So have I.”

“It’s never going to be easy, Nathan,” Audrey says.

“It should be,” Nathan says. He’s shaking again. His palm rattles in her grip.

Duke laughs again. “When have any of us ever done anything easy? Nathan,” he says. He moves closer, tentative. “You can destroy my whole damn bar. You can break every window I own. You can punch me in the face. Audrey and I are still going to be standing here. Offer’s on the table. It’s not coming off.”

Nathan pulls out of her grasp.

Audrey sees the fear resting darkly in Duke’s eyes as Nathan reaches for him, bandaged hand pressing against his cheek. Duke’s eyes drift closed, lashes a black arc of ink spill in the low light.

“It’s not easy, Nathan,” he mutters beneath Nathan’s hand. “It’s never easy. But we do it.”

Audrey feels her heart rabbiting in her chest.

“Nathan,” she says. “Let us show you.”

 _Breaking point_ , Audrey knows. Like a wishbone being held by two hands, here’s the moment that’ll show who gets the bigger half, whose wish comes true.

With a shaky breath, Nathan nods.

Things move quickly after that.

Audrey kisses him, Duke’s hands on her shoulders, not any softer than the two of them had kissed before, a cut of teeth. But slower. Deliberate. Like she's got all the time in the world. Nathan gasps against her, frantic. She doesn’t know if they’re going to make it upstairs, where she has a perfectly serviceable bed and clean sheets and glass isn’t scattered across the floor, glinting dangerously.

That's all right.

Duke moves behind her, coming around to grip one hand on Nathan’s neck, leaning in until she can see Nathan’s pupils gape darkly as he inhales the smell of him, rum breath.

Audrey twists to kiss him, too, let Nathan watch.

Nathan lets her, of course. There is no part of Nathan that doesn’t love her, she knows.  

They will work bruises into each other's skin and she will say again and again, _let us, let us, let us._

Nathan is going to whimper as Duke whispers against the shell of his ear, like a vow, like a prayer, _we were never going to let you die_. And, eventually, something _will_ give.

It’ll be a fight, it’s always a fight.

It’s always, Audrey knows, worth it.

 

 


End file.
